Like this:

It’s snowing on the blog again, which means it’s time for Christmas cartoons. Hooray! I think I get a lot of the old references here, though I’m not sure why Bing Crosby is a wind-up goat. I don’t understand the jack-in-the-box/bead toy “Why are you wearin’ the whiskers?” exchange, either. Anybody know what that’s about?

About a week ago I decided in the morning to do an etiquette & superstition post about “triangles,” because I had an etiquette point in mind but decided it was going to be too difficult to find a matching superstition for that exact topic. The vaguer “triangles” subject was going to cover both.

Well, this was all well and good until the evening when I was trying to figure out what the hell my “triangle” etiquette point was going to be about, because of course I hadn’t written it down. I wound up at about 11 p.m. going on Facebook and asking for help from friends for what topic this triangle etiquette thing was supposed to be about. Nothing clicked, and things got pretty weird suggestion-wise.

Benny was snoozing peacefully on the couch as I was muttering, “What is it… what IS it…,” and I guess I was getting a little loud because he asked what I was going on about, and I said, “Etiquette. Triangles. What could that be?” And still half-asleep he said, “Cheese?” And that was it. Benny knows me well.

You’ll notice this post isn’t about triangles. Turns out there aren’t a lot of great superstitions regarding triangles. Let’s move on to noses*.

ETIQUETTE: When cutting a bit of brie from a wedge, it is extremely rude for you to cut straight across the wedge, taking the tip for yourself. This is known as “cutting the nose” off the cheese, and it’s rude because this part is thought of as an especially delicious and creamy part of the cheese. Before this wedge was a wedge, it was part of a circle of cheese, and that tip is what was in the center of that circle.

What you need to do is slice a thin sliver lengthwise along one of the sides of the wedge so that you have some of the center, some of the middle, and some of the outer rind. Oh, and don’t scoop the middle out of the brie, leaving the rind on the plate. Take all of that even if you’re not going to eat the rind (which you really should, I mean come on). I don’t know if this is called picking your nose, but maybe it should be.

SUPERSTITION: A woman’s elbow and a dog’s nose are both cold because when Noah’s Ark sprang a leak, Noah couldn’t find his tools to fix it so he stuck his dog’s nose in the hole. The dog couldn’t breathe, though, so Noah grabbed his wife and jammed her elbow in there. Thanks, Noah.

If you have a nosebleed, you can cure it by stabbing a toad, putting the toad in a sack, and wearing the sack around your neck. Or you can find some moss from a dead man’s head and put that on your face. If both of these are too adventurous for you, you can just take a cold key and press it on your back. Yawn.

*”Why didn’t you just write an etiquette & superstition post about cheese?” you might ask. Well, I already did that. And yes, now I’ve screwed myself if I find a good etiquette tip about noses, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

My friend Vicki found this posted to the largest banyan tree* in the United States. An important note for an important tree.

Oh geez. This isn’t just an important tree. I just read that in India banyan trees are thought to be inhabited by malevolent spirits. Maybe that’s just Indian banyan trees though, and this pup is fine.

Oh geez, part two. I just read that in Malaysia banyan trees are thought to be inhabited by beings that swing down and terrorize villagers. Maybe this pup is still fine, though. A plush toy isn’t a villager, is it? And again, this isn’t Malaysia. It’s Hawaii.

The only thing I can find about Hawaiian superstitions and banyan trees is that a white woman might be living in the tree somewhere. And I’m sure you can melt her heart with this notice and make her give you back your pup, Kuroki. You definitely melted mine; I think it was the paw print. Best of luck with your quest.

I know I woke up at 7:45 of my own volition this Saturday morning, but I’ve never identified with Scrappy as much as in this cartoon. I’m ready for the holidays. I mean, not ready at all but ready as a child might be ready. But Thanksgiving is not until Thursday so I might need to go back to bed for a little bit as soon as I post this.

This weekend I re-found a house that I first visited about 25 years ago but hadn’t been able to find since. At some point over the years I decided that the house had either been razed or had never actually existed outside of a dream, but it turns out it was only one block over from where I had been looking the whole time. Hooray!

At first I was thinking it looked like that house in the 1980 TV movie of Brave New World, the lighthouse where Keir Dullea hangs himself.

… well, it isn’t. It isn’t the end. Fancy Notioners, I’m old enough to remember when Ronald Reagan got elected President, and there were a lot of people then who thought that he was going to end the world. Hollywood cowboy with an itchy nuclear trigger finger in the midst of the Cold War, restarting the nuclear arms race and joking about bombing the Soviet Union. Scaring the shit out of the Soviets, scaring the shit out of Americans, scaring the shit out of the planet.

But we got through that, and the world didn’t end. And whatever happens tonight, we’ll get through it. Take a goldang deep breath. And you know what? Even if you’re reading this some hours after I posted it and things have already taken a decided change for the worse, you can snuggle up in your bunker and enjoy Wilbur Hall performing “Stars and Stripes Forever” on the bicycle pump:

If you have time, go ahead and watch the rest of the movie; you’ll be rewarded with bits featuring Bing Crosby, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, and a drunk guy singing to a fish, amongst other things. If the hordes are approaching and you’re in a rush, you can skip to a weird and suggestive contortionist dance here, a rather violent romantic song here, and the ultra-patriotic (I guess?) Melting Pot show-stopper here. Three cheers.